The convergence of the twain (except we are in Bengal not mid Atlantic - as in the poem)

Funny how things can happen. It's just a street and this street is full of activity and colour and frying smells and the splashes of water from the pumps and the hiss of milk from the tea stall. And there is a snack seller who sets up at dawn: there will be samose for breakfast. Today he has made gol guppas -  little round wafers which he puffs up in hot oil and then fills with a mixture of potato or chick pea curry and a tart tamarind water. She cannot stop at one: the sourness, spice and salt being so at home in the searing heat.

An unfamiliar happiness while she does things such as this; holding the babies, being integrated into the life of the street. Not at home, but, for the first time in ages, feeling quite at home.

On one such day, while she dashes out to work, trying to make the metro to Chandni Chowk, she sees a man. Looks very fresh-faced; he is clocked. Surely she has seen him somewhere before? Today they are on different sides of the street, but he smiles. The next day, he asks for directions -- though she is never the right person to ask for this. They talk, walk, splash when the monsoon starts. He is supposed to be moving on; been an itinerant for ten years now, just come in from Bangladesh and from Meghalaya and Assam. But, as I said, funny things can happen.

Well reader, I promise, hand on heart, never to write with such sentimentality again, but our two restless souls were married within ten months. She has been foul to him today and that's why she wrote this story.

Subhodev: thank you for the old Calcutta photo.
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